


Nowhere Man

by perculious



Category: New Girl
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 10:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perculious/pseuds/perculious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winston could hear the muffled voices in the living room that meant the day had already started for the rest of the loft. Those guys. Seemed like every time they weren’t tearing the clothes off each other and sucking face on the kitchen counter they were fighting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nowhere Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [htbthomas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/htbthomas/gifts).



Winston woke up to the sound of Furguson’s purr, rumbling insistently like a motor engine. Before he even opened his eyes, Winston’s hands automatically came up to stroke the cat’s fur, making sure to tickle him a little under his chin right where he liked it.

By the time Winston had coaxed Furguson off of his chest, a twenty-minute process that typically involved both excessive praise and bargaining, and got dressed for work, he could hear the muffled voices in the living room that meant the day had already started for the rest of the loft. Those guys. Seemed like every time they weren’t tearing the clothes off each other and sucking face on the kitchen counter they were fighting. Winston crouched to the level of the bed and looked Furguson in the eyes. Furguson looked back at him, his squashed face perpetually plaintive.

“Listen to them,” Winston said. “Tearing each other apart like animals. Animals!” He paused a second, patted the cat on the head and said, “Not like you, though.” No disrespect.

He adjusted the knot on his tie, and cautiously opened the door into the war zone.

“—you know my _express_ wishes about the composition of this apartment, Jess, we have had this argument in countless iterations and every time you _know_ my feelings about—”

“—heaven’s sake, Schmidt, I am not _changing_ anything in this apartment, if you would just open your heart to the tiniest fraction of the joy and wonder and cheer that can be found in this magical world instead of letting it shrivel in your chest into a _tiny, petrified walnut_ —”

“—my heart is not a walnut, that is _offensive_ to me, my uncle is a heart surgeon and heart wrinkles are no joke, Jessica—Nick, back me up on this, I know you don’t like this any more than I do—”

Winston edged out of the room, clapping his hands over his ears. “Guys, don’t try to drag me into this!” he called out, trying to make a dash for the door. “I’m on my way to work!”

“Schmidt, please don’t, no, don’t make me decide—I mean, I like the decorations, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re nice and I like, I think, I mean—”

“Nick Miller, it makes me sick to my guts to see what’s become of you, you are not a man who wants construction paper snowflakes all over his home, the loft is our castle, our homestead—”

“—let him make up his own mind, Schmidt, he likes the snowflakes, because you know why? Do you know why? Do you _know? Why??_ Because Nick Miller has a little something we human beings like to call a _soul_ , and he appreciates the effort my students put into this, working their little grade school fingers to the bone with construction paper and scissors—”

Winston paused halfway across the room, dropping his hands from his ears. “Uh, guys,” he said. “I said, don’t try to drag me into this. Because I want no part of it. No, sir.”

“Please, they did not put any effort into these subpar snowflakes, Jess, your students don’t give a rat’s patoot about your crafts projects, they excreted several lumps of paper and had the sheer insane audacity to call them—”

“—I cannot believe you, Schmidt, I cannot _believe_ you are literally insulting children right now, do you want me to drive you into my school so you can kick them in the face too—”

“—Jess, I will show you what a decent construction paper snowflake is supposed to look like, since apparently you blatantly foster shoddy workmanship in your classroom—”

“Helloooooo,” Winston called out, waving a hand at the cluster of Nick, Jess, and Schmidt. “I definitely do not want to be dragged in to resolve yet another loft conflict, sacrificing my precious time and energy for lots of tedious interaction with my friends.”

“Whoa, whoa, hey guys, let’s just—let’s all just—I mean, why do we need to—can’t we—”

“Nick, shut up, we’re doing this. Jess, find me some construction paper and scissors.”

“I don’t just keep those things around me, Schmidt, just because I’m a teacher doesn’t mean—”

Schmidt pulled out two of the kitchen drawers at once, silverware and other cutlery jangling. “There’s gotta be some—”

“No!” Nick launched himself across the kitchen and slammed himself bodily against the kitchen counter, blocking the next drawer. “I am so sick of this! You two are always arguing like a couple of arguebirds!”

Schmidt crossed his arms over his chest. “Nick, don’t try to stand in the way of this—also what is an arguebird, that’s not even a—”

“Yeah, you know, like those birds that pick up human speech and they’re—”

“—no, that’s parrots, we’ve been over this before, Nick, I do not understand your thing about parrots—”

“—they are _very aggressive_ , Schmidt, have you ever met one, because—”

“I AM GOING TO WORK,” Winston yelled. The room went silent, and three pairs of eyes flicked over to him.

“Okay,” Jess said. “Bye, Winston.”

“Yeah, bye dude, have fun,” Nick said, elbowing Schmidt in the chest. Schmidt was now physically trying to pry his body away from the drawer.

“Hey, pick up some construction paper on your way home,” Schmidt said.

-

A few hours into the work day, he was in the middle of photocopying a massive pile of memos when Joe entered the copy room and knocked on the door frame.

“Knock knock, princess,” he said. Yeah, because he needed to knock and then physically say “knock.” Winston paused, one hand on the cooling stack of copies. The whole room smelled of printer toner, which was good because it blocked the usual musk of Joe’s cologne, which smelled like a bear in a horse stable.

“Yeah?” he said, his mind racing back to think—was there something he missed? Six Beyonce-colored shakes in Joe’s fridge, a hot damp towel on his desk before lunch, computer pre-loaded with five porn tabs when he came back from his meeting...

“When you’re done with that, you need to go through my script for the afternoon show and circle all the commas.” Right. Of course. Joe liked to pre-plan his breathing pauses.

Winston ran off one more copy, and then trudged back to his desk. Around this time of day, he really started missing Furguson, and he keenly felt the absence of warm fur clutched to his chest.

After about four pages of comma identification, he went to turn on his desk lamp for some extra light, and his fingers brushed a small gray envelope. He drew his hand back. It was sitting there discreetly on the desk; he hadn’t noticed because it was the exact same gray as his workspace.

He picked it up and opened it with his fingernail. Inside was a small piece of cardstock, and on it, in delicate handwriting:

_Winston,_

_I’m so sorry for how things ended between us. I’ve been meaning to apologize, but I haven’t worked up the_  
 _courage. Also, I was kind of pissed off that you kidnapped my cat. But listen, I want to give things another go. I_  
 _think I was just scared because my feelings for you were intense. Seriously intense._

_I think you may actually be the person I want to spend the rest of my life with._

_I know it’s a lot. Think about it, and give me a call._

_Yours,  
Daisy_

Winston turned the card over a few times, but there was nothing else. 

“Alright,” he murmured aloud, “alright, alright, I see what’s going on here.” He chuckled. “Nick Miller, you sick son of a bitch.” 

Kareem poked his head over the top of the cubicle. “You say something, Winnie?”

“Nah.”

“Oh, okay.” Kareem ducked down again, bending his knees to maintain the illusion that the cubicle wall was a real barrier.

Obviously, it was the set-up of a prank. Just last week Winston had woken up at 2am and carefully, sniggering quietly, replaced a third of Nick’s bag of instant coffee with a slightly more expensive brand. He’d thought Nick hadn’t noticed, but now it was clear that he had, and he had something to say about it. Winston rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. “Let the games begin,” he said.

“Winston?”

“Sorry, Kareem. Go back to work.”

-

Winston burst through the door of the loft after work to find Nick sitting on the couch. The couch was one of the only surfaces in the loft not covered in paper snowflakes. Snowflakes covered the windows and walls; snowflakes dotted the kitchen countertops and ornamented the cabinets.

“Winston,” Nick said, his voice low and strained. “You have got to get me out of here.”

“Alright, nice try, Nick,” Winston said. He took off his coat and hung it up. There was a paper snowflake wrapped around the coat hook. “What’s your game, you want me to look stupid? You tryna to get me slapped? You want to deal with a slapped Winston?”

“I have no idea what on earth you’re talking about, man, I have entered snowflake _hell_.” Nick’s hair was sticking up—a sign, Winston knew, that Nick had been twisting it through his fingers in despair. “They want me to choose sides, dude, you have got to help me.”

“Smooth, Miller. A little too smooth.” Winston started to walk toward the couch, but was distracted by a slight crunch. He looked down; there was a paper snowflake stuck to the bottom of his shoe. He picked up his foot and tried to shake it off, but it clung.

“Winston, I swear to god, I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve been sitting here all day trying to survive the snowflakepocalypse. We only have a short break right now because they went to the store for more supplies, they’ll be back any second—”

“Hang on.” Winston shook his foot a little more aggressively, trying to dislodge the paper. He hopped forward on his other foot until he overbalanced, nearly fell, and caught himself with a hand on the wall. “You seriously don’t know what I’m talking about? Are you for real? This is big, dude, don’t mess with me right now.”

“Yeah, man, I’m having a serious personal crisis! This is Nick time right now!” Nick’s voice spiraled upwards in desperation. “Nick needs his buddy!”

“Buddy needs a second,” Winston said. He reached down and tore the snowflake off his shoe. “Where’s Furguson?”

“What makes you think I can answer that question?”

“Fine,” Winston said, and headed off to look for him. He found Furguson in his bedroom, lying on the bed. “There’s my pretty,” Winston cooed, reaching down to trace the outline of Furguson’s ear with his finger. “Furguson, your daddy got proposed to today. You gonna be my best man? You gonna be my little cat best man?” Furguson hissed, turning his face away. “Okay, okay, my big cat best man.” The cat bared his teeth. “Alright, I’ll be the best man. That’s fine, I’ll be the best man, you be the groom. That’s cool.”

There was a portentous door slam, followed by the sound of Nick moaning softly.

“Nick, Schmidt almost killed us by trying to snowflake while driving—”

“Nick, Jess keeps using ‘snowflake’ as a verb—”

“Hey, guys!” Winston said, coming out and leaning against the door frame to his room. “I got some really big news.”

“We kind of have something going down right now, Winston,” Jess said, waving a stack of construction paper in the direction of his face. “This is pretty major.”

“Yeah, this is about the entire future of our loft,” Schmidt said. “The entire delicate power structure of our tiny but almost unhealthily close friend group hangs in—”

“No, guys, I have a thing, for real,” Winston said. “Okay, so it all started when I was in my office—”

“Nick,” Jess said, “can you please tell your _friend_ that his snowflakes are of no higher quality than—”

“No, can you tell your _girlfriend_ that she’s compromised the entire feng shui of the space with her mediocre—”

“Let me set the scene for you,” Winston said, holding his hands up. “There I am, sitting in my office—”

“You know what?” Nick dropped his hands from where they’d wound their way back into his hair, and stood up. “No! No! I knew you guys couldn’t be cool about this, this whole roommate-girlfriend situation! I am not just some _tool_ for you to use in your... negotiations, and then toss aside! I am a human being! I am a man! I need respect too!”

“You’re a man? You’re a _man_?” Schmidt slapped a paper snowflake down on the table. “Then do the manly thing, Nick Miller. You look right into your girlfriend’s eyes and tell her that her students make snowflakes that dogs wouldn’t piss on!”

“I cannot _believe_ you’re trying to shame him into—”

“Guys, Daisy wants to be with me!” Winston shouted. “I got this card, and she wrote this whole—”

“This isn’t about you, Winston,” Schmidt said.

“Yeah, this isn’t about you, Winston!” Jess yelled. “Schmidt, how come you always have to do that? No one was acting weird about my relationship with Nick before you started bringing it into arguments, you’re the one making it weird! Nick always sides with you because he’s afraid you’re going to think you’re losing him!”

“ _What?_ ” Schmidt slapped a hand to his chest like Jess had stabbed him in the heart. “That is ridiculous! Absolutely preposterous! If anything, I’ve been worried for you because it’s so embarrassing for you that Nick never stands up for you—”

“Yes, he does! He just waits until you’re out of the room and then he tells me I was right and he just doesn’t want to tell it to your face because you’ve been so insecure since Cece—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Nick held up his hands, leaning back. “Jess, let’s not go saying anything crazy, here.”

“Nicholas.” Schmidt’s mouth was pressed into a line. “Is this true?”

“You guys,” Winston said. “I’m gonna get married. Daisy said she wants to spend the rest of her life with me!”

Jess sighed, loud and frustrated. “Winston, we’re not really focusing on you right now, okay?”

“Nick?” Schmidt said again, trying to catch Nick’s eye. Nick was looking down at the floor.

“I just, uhhhh...” Nick mumbled. “I, um. Jess doesn’t like it when I don’t agree with her, so...”

“Ha!” Schmidt stabbed his index finger at Jess’ chest. “You’re the one he’s lying to because you’re the one who’s insecure!”

“Nick!” Jess swatted his arm. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t back me up on this!”

“Guys, I have seriously big news here!” Winston tried again. This time, no one even looked at him. Behind him, Furguson meowed softly.

Winston sighed, and turned around. “You’re right, Furguson,” he said. “I’m way too good for them.” Furguson meowed again, and then carefully licked his paw and groomed his whiskers. Winston went over and sat on the bed, patting Furguson’s side.

“We’ll see how they feel when I move into Daisy’s place,” he muttered. “Then they’ll regret leaving out ol’ Winston Bishop. Yes, they will.” Furguson purred.


End file.
